Biodiversity

"The Bureau of Land Management is required to auction off opportunities to drill in the Alaska wildlife refuge by the end of this year under 2017’s Tax Cuts and Job Act."

"After the loss of key federal wetlands protections in 2023, scientists are warning the damage this change could bring to wetlands would also bring billions of dollars of flood damage with it. According to a report from the Union of Concerned Scientists, there are 30 million acres of wetlands across the upper Midwestern United States providing crucial flood prevention benefits, whose loss could potentially cost the region more than $22 billion annually."

"The Biden administration is proposing to raise a key threshold determining how much of a pesticide that’s commonly used in the agriculture industry the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) finds concerning in the environment — spurring ire from some environmental advocates."

"In humanity’s war against rats, other animals are often collateral. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency released its final biological evaluation on rodenticides on Nov. 22 and found that the rat poisons are jeopardizing at least 78 endangered species such as black-footed ferrets and California condors."

"Marine biologist Monica Biondo has spent more than a decade studying the multibillion-dollar market for these colorful fish, which pulls thousands of species from the ocean each year."

"US regulators made “significant” errors in adopting a new rule four years ago around the release of genetically modified crops, and must now strengthen oversight, a federal court ruled this week."

"For millions of years, North America was home to a zoo of giants: mammoths and mastodons, camels and dire wolves, sloths the size of elephants and beavers as big as bears. And then, at the end of the Pleistocene Epoch about 12,000 years ago, most of them vanished."

"It is the world’s rarest whale, with only seven of its kind ever spotted. Almost nothing is known about the enigmatic species. But on Monday a small group of scientists and cultural experts in New Zealand clustered around a near-perfectly preserved spade-toothed whale hoping to decode decades of mystery."

"Louisiana has long relied on a vast levee system to rein in the Mississippi River and protect surrounding communities from flooding. But cutting off the natural flow of the river with man made barriers has been slowly killing one of the nation’s largest forested wetlands."

"Recordings by biologist Heike Vester reveal how oil and gas exploration as well as cruises, fishing boats and even whale-watchers are adding to the din underwater"